New York: A New York court heard a woman saying that former US President Donald Trump had sexually assaulted her on a flight in the US in the late 1970s, news agency AFP reported.
Jessica Leeds, who is now 81, was testifying on Tuesday in the writer E. Jean Carroll's rape and defamation lawsuit against Trump, when she opened up about her experience.
Traveling in the business class section of a flight to New York in 1978 or 1979, Trump put his hand up her skirt, Leeds told Manhattan's federal court.
She further alleged that it happened like out of blue as there was no conversation and Trump was ‘trying to kiss me, grabbing my breasts,’ she added.
Leeds first came out alleging against Trump after close to a dozen women accused him of sexual misconduct weeks before 2016 presidential polls.
Leeds made the allegations when she became furious after Trump refuted sexual assault allegations during a presidential debate with Hillary Clinton, AFP reported.
Now E. Jean Carroll's lawyers called Leeds to testify in an attempt to ‘persuade the nine-person jury that Trump has engaged in a pattern of sexual misconduct.’
The 79-year-old Carroll sued Trump alleging sexually assaulting her in a changing room at a department store in Manhattan in the mid-1990s.
After her disclosure in 2019 Trump, she claimed, ‘defamed her’ calling her ‘a complete con job’.
Carroll moved the court against Trump after a law in New York allowed victims of sexual assault one-year period to sue their abusers decades after the incident took place.
Carroll seeks from Trump ‘unspecified damages’ while asking him to withdraw his comments, according to the report.
The suit against Trump will not end up in prosecution but if he fails it can hold Trump legally ‘liable for an allegation of sexual assault’.